Salt flats, giant Inkan holes in the ground, y ruins galore

The salt flats of Salinas and the giant, bowl-like Inkan terracing of Moray were next on our list of places to visit in the Sacred Valley after Pisaq. We caught a 65 cent, 1 hour bus ride to Urubamba, where our (not so) trusty guidebook assured us that we would be able to hire a taxi for $16 to take us to both Salinas and Moray and back. Wasn´t that easy, folks at Lonely Planet. We arrived at the bus station, got off the bus, and Rachel immediately dropped her fleece, prompting a bunch of men to start laughing at us. Then we walked inside the small station to use the bathroom... only to be laughed at again by fellow bathroom goers when the woman charging entry asked us what exactly we were planning on doing in the bathroom (apparently it costs 30 cents more if you are going to, well, be there for a while). Then we went to search out the taxi drivers, only to discover that there were no taxis in the vicinity, only tiny colectivo buses. We stood in the doorway looking throroughly confused, when all of the sudden we were bombarded by a bunch of men asking us where we wanted to go and throwing out random high prices at us. They were also laughing at us. They told us it was so expensive because the road was terrible and the places we wanted to go were far, far away. After we told them about 20 times that we couldn't afford their high price, and once they'd gotten the laughs out of their system, we finally got a guy to agree to take us for just a dollar or two more than the price we originally wanted. Our driver turned out to be our age and pretty nice, so it all worked out well in the end. During our drive he started chatting with us, at one point asking us if we had any children. Definitely not the first time we've heard that question, but still really odd to hear it asked so often. It's normal here for women here to have children by the time they're our age so we must seem a bit weird as two 20-something year-old females travleing alone... without kids or a husband!

Salinas is about 6km outside of Urubamba. It's essentially a few hundred rectangular salt pools in a small valley that are used to create salt for cow licks (guess they have a lot of cows here!). Salt laden water is diverted into the salt pools, and then the water eventually evaporates leaving giant pans of salt. Our taxi drove us down into the valley on a thin, windy road, and as we arrived we were treated to a really cool view of the entire salt pan valley from above. We were then able to walk down onto the actual salt pans themselves and see them up close. Some pools were still pretty watery, while others were already hard, white salt. There were a few local workers scattered throughout the salt pan area, occasionally whacking the ground with giant shovels (it seems like they were trying to keep the salt pools level). We walked along the irrigation channel, which was particularly interesting because a lot of salt had built up on the sides of the channel and all the salt crystals looked just like snow.

After we'd had enough salt for the day, we got back in the taxi and headed off to Moray. The countryside on the way there was gorgeous... high, jagged Andean mountain peaks surrounding us, some still covered in snow, and the rest was just rolling hills with cows, sheep, donkeys, and the occasional indigenous woman carrying large sacks trying to flag down a ride. We passed through a small town called Maras with most of its buildings built entirely out of clay and straw and soon we were at our destination. Moray is a series of three terraced, bowl-like holes in the ground that the Inkas created centuries ago. From above the terracing looks like a bunch of huge, concentric circles. Nobody is exactly sure what their function was, but the concensus seems to be that they were used to figure out the best growing conditions for different types of crops. Each terraced layer apparently has its own microclimate. At the very bottom, some traditional Inkan crops have been replanted to give an idea of what they might have looked like before. We climbed down to the very bottom, only to realize that we actually had to climb back up in the burning sun. We were drenched with sweat by the time we got back to the top where our taxi driver had fallen asleep waiting for us.

Once we got back to Urubamba we caught the next colectivo bus heading to Ollantaytambo, our next stop in El Valle Sagrado. I can't remember how pronounce the name of that town for the life of me and it's really embarrassing... especially when we had to ask at the bus station when the next bus to ¨Olly.... oya... ollytah.... uhh....¨was. Taking the colectivo bus meant squeezing into a minature bus/van with a bunch of school children drinking liquid chocolate from a bag. It looked weird, but they seemed to like it. Our bus was full as we departed, but halfway through 5 little schoolboys flagged us down and they somehow managed to squeeze on in! At least the ride was only about 30 minutes long.

Ollantaytambo is a really cute town in a beautiful valley surrounded by a ton of nearby Inkan ruins. Its also the starting point for the 4 day Inka Trail hike, but we ¨cheated¨ according to my mom and took the train and a bus to Machu Picchu instead. Ollantaytambo has tiny cobblestone streets that are so small that cars can't even pass through, and a lot of the buildings are actually made of stone as well. It was also the site of a major Inka battle fought against the Spanish conquistadors. The Inkan fortresses and temples were built high up the slopes of the mountains, and when the conquistadors entered into the valley below, Manco Inka flooded the valley with pre-made channels built for that purpose and was able to slow down the conquistadors and their horses. Unfortunately, the Spanish later returned with more men and defeated the Inkas anyway in the end.

We spent our first evening at our hostal watching Man on Fire, Ratatouille (HILARIOUS... seriously, a rat who dreams of being a chef? And who cooks by controlling a human by pulling on his hair from under a chef's hat? Who thought of that?), and playing with the hostal owner's two white cats... one wearing a knit sweater, and the other with a cast on its broken foot.

On our second day in town, we walked the two minute walk to the ruins and explored them for most of the morning. We got pretty winded walking up the never-ending steps to the top, but so did all of the other elderly tourists (why were we the only young ones?) so I didn't feel too bad. Even with our few days in Cusco and time spent in the Sacred Valley, I guess we still didn't quite become acclimatized. The view from the top was a beautiful panorama of Ollantaytambo at the bottom of the valley surrounded by insanely high, jagged mountains and a few more ruins scattered around some of the slopes. At one point I lost Rachel within the ruins and thought she might have climbed up the hillside a bit further. I started up a path, only to suddenly hear a loud whistle and discover that a guard was furiously whistling and waving at me to get down. I somehow managed to go into an off limits area on accident. Oops. Once I found Rachel, we discovered a path that hugged the mountain side... we followed it to another set of small ruins and then made our way down the terracing to what looked like residential housing and baths below. Amazingly the Inkan watering system was still working and water from the nearby river was flowing through tiny channels and out of water spouts all over the place. Those Inkans were some smart cookies.

(Really sad side note: right when we got to the top of the ruins, Rachel tried to change her photo settings to a higher quality picture, only to discover that by pressing ¨format memory card¨she had instead deleted ALL her pictures from southern Ecuador in Cuenca up until now!!! At least I took mostly the same pictures of everything, but she still felt terrible.)

In the afternoon, after our amazing find of lunch for just 4 soles ($1.60ish) in some random woman's house (everything else was ridiculously high tourist prices for the same exact food), we headed toward the train station to go to Aguas Calientes. Almost to Machu Picchu! We had to take the more expensive Vistadome train since ¨supposedly¨the backpacker train was booked. But I won't complain since we were treated like royalty, complete with airplane style meals (except delicious, rather than disgusting) and windows on the ceiling of the train so that we could appreciate the views of all the impressive mountain scenery just a bit better The train employees wore wore one professional-like uniform to serve us our snacks, but later changed into a hilarious tour guide type get-up, complete with a khaki vest and large khaki hat when they came back down the aisles to try to sell us Machu Picchu tourist shtuff. Did they think it made them seem more believable, hence we'd be more likely to buy overpriced picturebooks, baseball hats, and postcards from them? We followed the path of the Rio Urubamba and after about an hour and a half we arrived in Aguas Calientes, aka Machu Picchu Pueblo... the tiny, oh so touristy town that marks the start of everyone's Machu Picchu journey... well, those of us who are too poor and/or too lazy to arrive in Machu Picchu on the Inka Trail instead. Even though the town is almost microscopic, we somehow got lost after leaving the train station and ended up on the local's side of the river rather than on the crazy touristy side. Thanks again Lonely Planet, this time for your great mapping skills.

The town itself is in a great location, right at the base of the cloud forest, surrounded by beautiful green mountains and straddling the clear river that cascades down through the middle of the town. However, the town thrives on tourism since so many tourists pass through here to take the bus up the hill to Machu Picchu... so you really can't get away from all the people trying to get you to eat at their restaurant every step you take. ¨No thanks, no, no, no gracias, no, we already ate, thanks, no, no no NOOooooo!.¨Funny thing is, it seems that all the restaurants serve the exact same food and are all decorated similarly inside with slight variations. They all offer 4 for 1 happy hour drinks to entice you to come in. We allowed one of the waiters to convince us to eat at his restaurant for dinner (don't tell anyone)... well, he DID give us a 3 sole discount and threw in an offer to give us free wine the next night if we came back. Wouldn't you eat there, too? We shared one menu del dia for dinner (appetizer, soup, main dish, drink) since we had been fed so well on the train a few hours prior... the waiter thought we were a bit odd, especially when we started slurping soup from the same bowl, but that didn't stop him from talking to us and becoming our new buddy. We even taught him the word ¨clumpy¨in English, which he can now use to his heart's desire. After dinner we had to pass back and forth past his restaurant another 5 times or so since there is only one road up to our hostal, which was a bit awkward, but each time we passed by we received another compliment from the other waiter in training.... he started with just a simple ¨Hey ladies¨, but by the end he was saying ¨Son hermosas!¨(You´re beautiful!).

Anyway, fell alseep to the lovely sounds of something (animal? lost child?) pitter pattering across our tin roof and some loud Americans in the hallway trying to speak Spanish to each other in terrible accents. Great way to prepare for our early morning wake up the next morning at 4:45am and visit to Machu Picchu.